Tuesday, December 20, 2011

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Status Update

By Autism Discussion Page

Non directive learning

Many therapies focus on prompting, directing, and trying to draw a response out of a child. This is very irritating for the child, creates performance anxiety, and the child often freezes, requiring repeated prompting. The response often becomes very prompt dependent, and is rote learning, with little functional meaning. When you set up a favorable activity, take the performance pressure off, and allow the child to "experience" without directing, the skills will come. What we need to do more of is create experiences (activities) that put the child is situations to invite the "responses" we want to see, without drilling/prompting them. That is how most children learn. Place the child in functional activities which tend to invite the responses, and participate in the activity with him/her. Focus on "shared participation" and enjoy sharing the experience. Focus on participation, rather than performance. Stop prompting and directing, and allow the activity to flow. By the child wanting to "engage" skills will come more naturally. No one wants to be prompted, directed, and corrected.

We have become so conditioned to teach by prompting, directing, correcting, etc. that we have forgotten how to simply play, have fun, and naturally learn.